The center of our universe
by iris0011
Summary: Masaki was the center of her little boy's universe. Years later, Ichigo unknowingly becomes the center of everybody's universe around him. Their leader, their idol, their inspiration, their hope... (Series of oneshoots)


The center of our universe

_**'I loved my Mom. Not just me. When it was still the four of us, Yuzu, Karin and Dad all loved Mom too. Mom filled up the center our family revolved around.'**_

**Masaki was the center of her little boy's universe. Years later, Ichigo unknowingly becomes the center of everybody's universe around him. Their leader, their idol, their inspiration, their hope...**

_Author's Notes:_

_**Description****:** This will be a series of oneshoots, all featuring Ichigo's relationship with one of his friends/family members. (As close to manga terms as I can put it, but of course according to my own taste. Excuse me that.) _

_**Prompt:** I will do females first. It was actually my father who gave me the muse for this. He said, that in his opinion all the shiping wars concerning Ichigo could be just forgotten, because all the females around him seems to represent different aspects of femininity. Of course this reasoning only works theoretically, it wouldn't console anyone absorbed in the plot, and hungry for romance. _

_But I became curious, and had the idea to experiment a little with these „different aspects of femininity". _

_**Characters I plan to feature:** Yuzu, Karin, Rukia, Orihime, Tatsuki at first, then Chad and Uryu, maybe others._

_**Warning:** There will be no declared couples in this, but bare in mind, that my original fandom is IchiHime, so I won't wander off very far from that. I won't bitch any other couple though, or feature other girls slightingly. _

_**Disclaimer:** I so wish that some day I would be able to create such a magnificently detailed and „fitting together" universe, as Kubo Tite's Bleach._

_Oh, this Author's Note came out long... Congrats to you who read it throughout! Let's begin._

_...  
_

Chapter 1

_Who brought me back to the bright side of the moon_

As the night approached, the Kurosaki household was quiet, calm and warm: a place of peace. The shuffling of feet long ago died away, the taps in the bathroom quiet, the lights turned off. It was bed-time.

In the twins room, Isshin was reading a fairy tail with princesses, which Yuzu followed with rapturous, gleaming eyes. In Ichigo's room, her twin and her big brother were cuddled around Masaki, listening to her bedtime story: a tale containing marvelous spaceships flying across space to find new lands.

When Isshin's story came to an end, five year old Yuzu uttered a content little sigh, then searched her bed to find her favorite cuddling toy. From under her pillow, the corner of a much battered piece of tissue was sticking out, which once had been patterned with ruby red strawberries, but faded gradually to dull pink with time. Originally, it had been a pillow-case of Ichigo's which Yuzu chose to snatch for her own back when she had been only six month old, and she had treasured it ever since. She only showed it to a select favored few, and it was the highest of honors if she let someone touch it.

With this most important possession in hand, she marched on her short, sturdy little legs to the next room's door, and stood there, listening to her mother finishing her story. Yuzu waited patiently, not interrupting, until Masaki's spaceship-crew finally returned to Earth, and landed safely. Only after she had said: '_...and they lived happily ever after_' did Yuzu move a little forward, but still more or less remaining in the doorway, with a queer shy, but determined kind of air. Her mother looked up, and Yuzu met her eyes with a suggestive gaze, lifting up the strawberry tissue, holding it out before herself, in a gesture of request. As she did every night.

Masaki smiled at her warmly. Also as she did every night.

'Coming, Darling! I'll be with you in a minute. I'll just kiss your brother goodnight.'

Yuzu nodded seriously, and wandered back to her own room, feeling reassured. After all, the procedure of the "putting into bed" was a serious, almost sacred thing to her childish mind, and it was always a comfort to know, that her own part, her fair share of mother's care would be given to her tonight, without which it seemed to her impossible to close her little eyes. Routine is always an important thing with children, and with some, it's more important than with others. It certainly was the case with little Yuzu. While it was ok to have her father read the bedtime story for her, it could be nobody else, but her beloved mother, who sat silently at her bedside, caressing her face with the important strawberry tissue, while she gently whispered her to sleep.

Once Masaki had had to go away to some meeting, and Yuzu had had much trouble with going to sleep that night, but she had shrieked when her father had tried to take her mother's scared place, and she wouldn't let him touch her precious strawberry tissue. If she couldn't have her mother, she would have no-one in her place, but rather struggle alone sulkingly in the dark.

So that night, just like usual, after kissing Ichigo good night, and silently promising him to return for another check on him after the twins were asleep, Masaki went to the girl's room to fulfill every duty of mother's care, that made up the peace that filled the whole house around her she had made a home.

She went with a smile, not knowing, that less than a mere week from that night, Yuzu and her other beloveds would be forced to find ways to struggle on without this peace. It was the eve of the 12th of July...

...

Ichigo sat on the riverside.

Alone.

Again.

By this time, every detail of this particular spot must be attached deeply into his memory. He was sure that no matter how old he grew, he would always remember where there had been a broken step halfway in the concrete stairs leading down to the water, and that there was an ugly graffiti on the backside of the bench on the right, of which's creator didn't even have the decency to spell the letters right.

All in all, it would have been a rather gloomy place, lonely in it's abandonedness, even without his own terrible memories to go with it. The only bright side to it was the constant merry babbling of running by water, and the lights dancing on it's surface. Of course there had been no lights that day...

It had been raining.

It had been cold. And gray. Everything gray. Except her ruby red blood mingling with the mud on the ground.

He hated this place. He came here as a punishment for himself. He deserved it. The punishment. He had committed a crime. The worst crime of all. It was his fault. Everything. His fault alone.

He should have protected her. He had even promised. His very name promised it too.

But he had failed.

He had abandoned her. Endangered her with his foolishness.

He as good as murdered her.

Why did she have to run there, and protect him? It would have been so much better if it could have been him... He wished it was so. He would rather died in his mother's place. Would trade if it would be possible.

How could he look his family in the eyes, without shame again? How can they go on without their most important member, their beloved mother? How could they not detest him, when it had been him who had robbed them from so much care and love?

Poor Yuzu. She was having raging fits, and crying all the time. Besides that, she hardly spoke one rational word to others.

Karin. She didn't cry much, but she kept barricading herself in her room, and when not, she wandered about the house aimlessly, like a living ghost.

And his father. Isshin looked like a mess these days, with his eyes sunken, his face unshaven, and sullen because of sudden lost of weight. He had also developed a habit of talking to himself.

Ichigo couldn't face them. Not one of them.

Because even though Yuzu screamed, she never screamed at him. Even though Karin looked at everything with empty, detesting eyes, she never looked at him that way. Even though his father tried to talk to him, he never said one word of blame.

He wished they did.

It would be so much better if they did.

He needed the punishment. Because he did wrong.

He must be punished!

It was even cruel of them not to punish him, and deny him the relief of just suffering.

Some other suffering then this hollow loneliness...

So this was why he kept coming to this spot on the riverside. To wait for his punishment to find him. Maybe a lightning would just descend from the heavens and strike him to death.

He was not afraid of that. It would be just well.

Atonement for his crime...

Relievement from his pain and suffering.

He kept coming here, while his father thought he was safely in school, wondering from morning till dusk, searching for this relief. For his punishment.

That's what he told himself.

But deep down, there was another motive. Even though he knew better, his childish heart fancied that his mother couldn't have just vanished from this earth. She couldn't have disappeared like that, without leaving a single trace. The mind could accept the fact, but the heart never. So, in a simple act, he came in search to the very spot she had been with him last, to search for her shadow, to search for any kind of connection with her. His aching heart longed for it so much, that sometimes it even seemed real.

This was where she had fallen.

The ground still bore witness. Even though it had been weeks, he could fancy some grass-leafs were still bent from her falling weight...

At this particular place, her presence sometimes seemed so strong, that he just couldn't help thinking... Maybe he would only have to jump into the river, and drown himself, and in exchange his mother would be returned to his family...

Or if not, at least he would be reunited with her. The one that taught him to love, in passing away took his whole ability to love this world with her.

Too dark thoughts for a nine year old to have.

But it seemed to him that he was an undeserving, good-for-nothing little brat, whom nobody could love any more, whom nobody needed any more...

He was sitting there alone, with these dark thoughts crashing him down, and there was no relief, because he wished none to be. He just closed out everyone and everything, hiding, being sunk in pain.

'Ichigo.'

He looked up, shielding his eyes from the rays of the descending sun.

His father stood on the top of the stairs, looking down, with a pained face. Both twins were with him, clinging to his two arms. Isshin sighed.

'This can't go on like this, son. Come. We've come to take you _home_. Isn't this right, girls?'

Ichigo bit his lip, fighting back tears. Crying did no good.

Finally he stood up, following his father obediently, and quietly.

...

That night, Isshin again tried to have a heart to heart with his son, but to no real avail. He tried to be kind and understanding at first, but then, being desperate, he played the "severe parent" card, and tried to confront him about skipping school. But Ichigo reacted to both with the same indifference.

With the same hollow, empty look he had had in his eyes ever since that day...

Since the moment he had found him, and had to literally strip him away from Masaki's stone-cold body.

He hated seeing him that way. It made him feel ashamed...

He couldn't even imagine what SHE would say, seeing him like that.

His smiling son.

She had loved his big, goofy smile so much...

But Isshin felt powerless, empty himself.

He was on the edge of giving up completely, when Karin suddenly interrupted then, with a story-book in hand. Isshin noticed that Karin had deliberately chosen one of her brother's favorite. His heart was suddenly filled with warmth, seeing this innocent try, it being Karin's way of expressing her love, and bringing comfort. He guessed that after everything, this childish way might work just as well as anything else. So he gathered Karin and Ichigo around himself, and began reading.

And it almost worked too. Isshin tried to leave behind all the tiredness and sadness for a while, trying to loose himself as fully as he could in the story. At least while it lasted, he didn't have to think about how there was no Masaki in the next room...

Karin and Ichigo must have felt the same. They just let themselves sink in the familiar flow of the story, escaping reality.

None of them realized the shyly appearing new presence in the doorway...

When the story ended, Yuzu cleared her throat softly, hardly audible.

All looked up.

Yuzu had the strawberry tissue in her hand, fiddling it with her fingers. She hesitated for a moment still, then having finally decided herself she looked up quite suddenly, directly at her brother.

'Onii-chan!' she said sharply, clearly.

It was not an address. It was a request. More like a demand.

A desperate, needy demand.

She moved forward, and to make her meaning even clearer, she raised the strawberry patterned tissue holding it out unmistakably towards Ichigo. She wasn't smiling. Her face was set, determined.

Ichigo gulped. His throat suddenly felt very tight and dry. A strange hotness spread through his whole body. He balled his hands into fists, and the look in his eyes changed.

The hollowness in them were filled with something.

A new light of determination was born.

'Coming, Yuzu...' he said quietly, but firmly.

Yuzu looked at him just a moment longer, cherishing this newborn connection, then she turned, as she used to do, waiting for him to follow.

As Ichigo raised to go after her, he couldn't help some new thoughts, healthier than anything he had permitted himself to think since the night of his mother's death enter his head.

Maybe he was still needed.

Maybe he couldn't return their mother to his family, but maybe he could stay with them, and do everything he could to protect them for her, in her place. After all, she had protected him with her life...

This is what he must be committed to do for them in her place.

In honor of her memory.

In the name of duty.

These new thoughts, though weren't happy, held some hope attached to them nonetheless, thus opening way for future...

He was loved after all.

He was needed after all.

He was forgiven.

...

_A/N:_

_Thank you for reading._

_Hope it worked as I intended it to..._

_Please review!_


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